[3.15 WIP] Saboteur Crit BL Mines (Life League-start/SSF to Budget LL ES All Content Viable)

From a league starter perspective, what do you think of freezing pulse totem hiero VS this build?
I am debating and conflicted

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tlang wrote:

From a league starter perspective, what do you think of freezing pulse totem hiero VS this build?
I am debating and conflicted

I’ll be completely honest, I can’t say personally. I don’t know enough about Hierophant Totems or how hard they were affected by changes to make that call as I’ve been spending what little time I have focused on putting this together and making adjustments for changes. What I can say is that this build took very little nerfs relative to other ones from what I’ve seen, it was very good prior to nerfs, and remains very good. I can also say the other build was very good prior to changes and has guides who’s authors worked on the guides for longer than I worked on this one so they’ve probably tested things more thoroughly than I have. You could also consider Saboteur or Ranger Ice Trap.

IMHO, if you have time, your best bet is to maybe try an act 1-5 (1-10 is better if you really have time) of some and see how you feel about each. If you’re time constricted like myself maybe look into some vods of each build and see which you think looks more enjoyable for end game. Good luck!

PoB updated for 3.15 community fork with some minor adjustments to each tree. Added a rough red map tree as well.

Great guide, but I think you have an issue with your leveling guide. How can you get into vaal ruins in act 2 without killing or saving alira?

anyway, the probabillity that i will use your guide for league-start is really high atm. :o)

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Perry_Hotter wrote:

Great guide, but I think you have an issue with your leveling guide. How can you get into vaal ruins in act 2 without killing or saving alira?

anyway, the probabillity that i will use your guide for league-start is really high atm. :o)

You only need the Baleful Gem and Maligaro’s Spike to enter the Vaal Ruins: https://poedb.tw/us/The_Root_of_the_Problem
We are helping Alira:

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‣ On the opposite border of the one you used to find The Weaver, find Alira and choose to help her then continue S to find the Black Guard.
‣ Kill the Black Guard, loot the Thaumetic Emblem and place it in the wall then relog to return to town.

Good luck with league start m8, hope it helps if you choose to go mines.

Looks like a great build, but I've never done a LL build so I'm a bit nervous about using this as a league starter.

Could you give some tips on when exactly to switch to LL or what to do if you can't afford Shav's?

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freebo_be wrote:

Looks like a great build, but I've never done a LL build so I'm a bit nervous about using this as a league starter.

Could you give some tips on when exactly to switch to LL or what to do if you can't afford Shav's?

You don’t make the swap to LL until after red maps unless you get really lucky with drops. The Life version with Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics should be able to push you to red maps and allow you to farm some currency for the transition. LL is not an option without Shav’s, it’s mandatory along with Chayula’s Presence. These are your first big investment points for the build, until then we’re literally getting by on self found rares with bench crafted resists or life and self crafted wands. We also want to try to shoot for level 93 before the LL transition as that’s the minimum tree included in the PoB; any less and you have to start removing passives. You can opt to invest a few chaos in particular uniques to help early red mapping and a 5 L Shavronne’s can help open up the budget a bit more. In trade league I’d use the chaos recipe with a filter to compliment it starting in Act 9 and some particular farming strategies depending on how they change Maven passives but it’s hard to say until I know more. The build is great for Atoll Essence farming but it was very popular last league and might be changed. I’ll have some resources and more details for entry mapping to red mapping up as soon as I can.

Some rough goals:
-Entry mapping
3k Life, capped resistances
4 link BL and Icicle Mines, CWDT + Immortal Call

-Low red maps
4k Life, capped resistances
5L BL
Self crafted wands with +1 to all Lightning Spells and Lightning Damage to Spells or Crit to Spells (normal wand + 40% total quality “lightning” 2 or more gems sold to vendor gives a magic +1 to all Lightning spell base, bench craft and/or regal orb to get the rest)
Corrupted Blood Immunity implicit jewel (Vaal your decent jewels, prioritize resists and life but the corrupted mod itself is most important)
Enduring Composure small cluster (buy the base item “15% increased armor” item level 68+ and try to roll the mod yourself)
Malachai’s Artifice Armeggedon Brand (drop Arcanist Brand, WoC and manually cast Conductivity)
Atziri’s Step boots and Atziri’s Promise flask (we can self farm these after finishing campaign)
4th Ascendancy, upgraded Pantheon
Bubbling/Staunching Life Flask
Enduring/Heat Mana Flask
Heat Aquamarine
Ample Quicksilver

-Links:
BL- Minefield (Swift Assembly if 5-link with High-Impact Mines + Demolition Specialist) - Slower Projectiles - Trap and Mine Damage or Elemental Focus - High-Impact Mines
Icicle Mines - Trap and Mine Damage - Faster Projectiles - Charged Mines
CWDT - Immortal Call (add Increased Duration if you can manage >90 mana with 19+ mines out)
Arcanist Brand - WoC - Conductivity (drop Arcanist Brand and WoC if using Malachai’s artifice)
Phase Run, Smoke Mine, Flame Dash, Skitterbots, HoT (add Clarity if you can still manage >90 mana with 19+ mines out)

E: Added these notes to guide.
Dropped non dodge based tree from the later trees, it’s significantly better and we’ll need plenty of regrets for the transition to LL ES either way. This lets us pick up some pierce passives near Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics and further boost our clear with Faster Projectiles. Updated leveling trees for a few reduced reservation nodes to help with the mana multiplier increase on supports. Unfortunately I doubt I’ll have time to finish reformatting the full leveling guide to make it easier to follow (acts 1-2 are done) but the full skeleton is there. I’m trying to focus on testing the BL transition in Act 5 to make sure there won’t be mana issues and finish up the entry mapping to red maps section. If there’s a problem with mana for BL we simply use Stormblast Mine a little longer which is fine. I’ll also consider dropping HoT for the BL transition if the damage loss isn’t too impactful. I’ll have a verdict on this by tonight or tomorrow morning and adjust the guide as needed.

I've been playing mines almost exclusively these past few leagues, but after the mana multiplier nerfs, I'm actually not sure how to make them work. I was originally planning on doing Eye of Winter mines, but using Freezing Pulse as a PoB placeholder, my mana cost per mine on a 6-link went from 13 to 26 each, and Freezing Pulse costs less mana than Eye of Winter does.

That got me thinking, how exactly do you plan on mitigating the 33 mana cost per mine before you swap to LL? By swapping your trees from the Essential one to the Levelling Tree 4, you go from having 900 or so unreserved mana to having a little over 500. The amount of mana you get isn't enough to cover all 19 mines you can throw down, it's enough for 16, and that wouldn't give you much leftover mana to cover the costs of movement skills + Immortal Call, since you now have to pay the cost of triggered skills.

I don't really know how to solve that problem, so I wanted to know what your take on this is. The only few things that really come to mind would be to either drop an aura or remove a link, neither of which are ideal. Or I guess just accept that you can't drop that many mines at once?

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Astroelmeria wrote:

I've been playing mines almost exclusively these past few leagues, but after the mana multiplier nerfs, I'm actually not sure how to make them work. I was originally planning on doing Eye of Winter mines, but using Freezing Pulse as a PoB placeholder, my mana cost per mine on a 6-link went from 13 to 26 each, and Freezing Pulse costs less mana than Eye of Winter does.

That got me thinking, how exactly do you plan on mitigating the 33 mana cost per mine before you swap to LL? By swapping your trees from the Essential one to the Levelling Tree 4, you go from having 900 or so unreserved mana to having a little over 500. The amount of mana you get isn't enough to cover all 19 mines you can throw down, it's enough for 16, and that wouldn't give you much leftover mana to cover the costs of movement skills + Immortal Call, since you now have to pay the cost of triggered skills.

I don't really know how to solve that problem, so I wanted to know what your take on this is. The only few things that really come to mind would be to either drop an aura or remove a link, neither of which are ideal. Or I guess just accept that you can't drop that many mines at once?

I’ve pondered this a lot since patch notes were released and unfortunately I haven’t had time to test everything the way I want to. The three best solutions that immediately come to mind are:
-Try to work out passives for reduced reservation (don’t think this will be enough based on your comments)
-Swap a support for Inspiration (dreaded Red socket)
-Drop Herald of Thunder completely

It’s important to disable the end game item setup and use a more relevant one (I haven’t had time to make these yet) to get a more accurate idea of unreserved mana too.

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I’ve pondered this a lot since patch notes were released and unfortunately I haven’t had time to test everything the way I want to. The three best solutions that immediately come to mind are:
-Try to work out passives for reduced reservation (don’t think this will be enough based on your comments)
-Swap a support for Inspiration (dreaded Red socket)
-Drop Herald of Thunder completely

It’s important to disable the end game item setup and use a more relevant one (I haven’t had time to make these yet) to get a more accurate idea of unreserved mana too.

I don't think taking Efficient Explosives by itself would solve the problem, yeah... Inspiration support would definitely help some, but like you said, it is a red socket and a DPS loss.

Can definitely hope that combining both of those by anointing neck with Efficient Explosives + swapping Added Lightning Damage with Inspiration might be enough to push through to a point where one can swap to LL. If not, can always do one of those two or both AND drop Herald of Thunder, I guess.

I also didn't change anything in your item setup, so maybe there's gear changes that can be made to help, like adding max mana on rares or something. Would have to think more on that.

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Astroelmeria wrote:

I don't think taking Efficient Explosives by itself would solve the problem, yeah... Inspiration support would definitely help some, but like you said, it is a red socket and a DPS loss.

Can definitely hope that combining both of those by anointing neck with Efficient Explosives + swapping Added Lightning Damage with Inspiration might be enough to push through to a point where one can swap to LL. If not, can always do one of those two or both AND drop Herald of Thunder, I guess.

I also didn't change anything in your item setup, so maybe there's gear changes that can be made to help, like adding max mana on rares or something. Would have to think more on that.

Adjacent Animosity is so good for BL that I wouldn’t want to miss out on that either way. The way we reach hits per ball “breakpoints” is pretty drastically affected by that annoint. There’s another option— skipping BL entirely until you can fit the mana costs and opting for something like Pyroclast Mines. The tree would change but it would open up the option to grab passives with increased projectile speed (which we desperately avoid for BL) which would also benefit your clear with Icicle Mines.

Also you mentioned Added Lightning Damage but IIRC my most recent PoB no longer included that besides the awakened version. Make sure you’re looking at the most recent version because I did make changes specifically for mana on all trees and I’ll double check that the most up to date version is provided in the guide when I get home from work.